2016 IPD Report

IT WAS the week before International Permaculture Day (IPD) and scattered across the world imaginations had been stirred and ideas hatched in the fertile brains of permaculture practitioners. There are now 41 events listed for IPD 2016.

A big thanks

It is a BIG thanks that goes out to the people behind all of these events… the people who make things happen… the people who are making IPD2016 a reality in our towns, cities and countryside. In them lie the genes, the promise, of future International Permaculture Days.

This establishes IPD across a suite of social media platforms which have different users who will encounter it. Evidence this is starting to happen comes from the 18 followers and many likes for individual images gained within a few minutes of the IPD Instagram going live last night.

The Facebook page has:

16,000 likes, gaining 203 this week

women 55-64 are the largest IPD Facebook user demographic

computers are the most common device used to access the IPD Facebook page

AND, SO… a little speculation

And so, do we see a sentiment to continue International Permaculture Day?

I believe so. The evidence? That all these people, all over the world, have responded to the call to organise events within only two and a half weeks, the time since the IPD website and IPD itself was revived by a small team acting quickly (sorry, no ‘small and slow solutions’ were used-just bold and rapid).

The priority has been to:

reestablish an IPD website as soon as possible within the three weeks timeframe available

use online media to assess whether there was continuing interest in IPD

use the website and postings on social media to encourage permaculture practitioners to organise IPD events for 2016

to set up online infrastructure for IPD that would be useful for future IPDs should there be interest in continuing IPD.

The flow of energy through a system acts to organise that system.
…From the cover of the 1968 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, quoting American biophysicist, Harold J. Morowitz.

RAPID RESPONSE and SELF-ORGANISATION

The reinstatement of an updated online presence for IPD2016 is testament to the spirit of voluntary initiative that exists within the permaculture milieu. The renewed infrastructure has been created by people offering what they can by way of voluntary skills and effort within the time they have available amid all the other prioritises of life.

IPD2016 has been brought together by an ad hoc team that hastily self-organised:

Elisa Catalini (Italy)

Gillian Kozicki (Sydney)

April Sampson-Kelly (Mt Kembla, NSW)

Megan Cooke (Pacific Palms, NSW)

Fiona Campbell (Sydney)

Russ Grayson (Sydney).

People self-organise into networks despite the ineffectiveness of their government…
…David Kilcullen.

THANKS

We would like to thank those who have sent ideas on making the website work better and for their patience.

The new website is just two weeks old and, with the necessity of moving rapidly so that there would be an IPD2016, there has not been the time for the usual debugging and finessing. Enacting the design principle of ‘make continual improvements’, this will be continued over time.

Amid the daily news of hostile takeovers, greedy dictators, famous celebrities acting foolishly, and reports of planetary decay, students find a system of ethical decisions welcome and productive. Permaculture is a positivistic design process, focusing on what we can do today in this place to make things begin moving in the right direction.
…Keith Johnson, publisher Permaculture Design Magazine, USA.